Ms Justice Eileen Roberts this week refused the High Court application for enforcement of the record judgment issued by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2023, which amounts to $17.5 billion with accrued interest.

The New York judgment is under appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, but the stay on enforcement had expired at the time of the Irish proceedings.

In her judgment, Ms Justice Roberts said she did not consider there to be “any solid practical benefit to the plaintiffs in permitting enforcement of the New York judgment here”.

She also said she was not satisfied that the plaintiffs had a “bona fide expectation of actual or likely enforcement related activity in this jurisdiction”, having heard the proceedings were brought as part of a strategy to “apply pressure” on Argentina to reach a settlement.

Similar proceedings have been brought in England and Wales, France, Luxembourg, Australia, Canada and Cyprus, the court was told.

Ms Justice Roberts also considered the impact of the proceedings on the administration of the Irish courts.

“A lengthy and costly enforcement hearing in Ireland – a jurisdiction with which the substantive proceedings have no connection whatsoever – would, in my view, place a significant burden on the Irish courts,” she said.

The proceedings could take more than three years to be brought to a conclusion and would “divert scarce judicial resources away from cases where the court’s intervention would have a real and meaningful practical impact on the outcome of the litigation before it”.

For these reasons and others, the court declined to accept jurisdiction to enforce the New York judgment in Ireland.

Irish law firm William Fry represented Argentina in the case, Petersen Energía Inversora SAU & Ors v Argentine Republic [2025] IEHC 463.

Partners Ruairi Rynn and Gerard James led the William Fry team, which included Rachel Kelly and Declan Keane, with a counsel team of Michael Cush SC and Claire Hogan BL.